Turning a Strength into a Weakness

I hope you noticed the little spin I used in the title on an old interviewing trick, Turning a Weakness into a Strength. I remember the first time I heard of this little trick, I was in high school. I was applying for a courtesy clerk, translation: bagger, position at the local Publix. I don’t remember the store manager’s first name, but his last was Black, Mr. Black. He asked me what I thought my biggest weakness was and since I had performed a little research on the Internet I was ready for it. I reflected on my answer for a brief moment and then responded, “I’m a perfectionist. It absolutely kills me if I can’t do something 100% correct. I tend to focus on the one task until it’s completed exactly how it’s supposed to be done. (I chuckle softly) I can even become a bit of a bear to others if they interfere with my quest for perfection. However, by recognizing my problem this gives me a distinct advantage over others. I always strive to do my best and when I notice that I’m starting to get frustrated with my quest for perfection I ask for help.” (All of this is true by the way. Well… I don’t like asking for help, but I will if absolutely necessary.)

I thought that was the best answer ever given during an interview. The manager gave me what I can only guess was a canned response (which I don’t remember) of that being a good weakness to have. What I do remember is he wasn’t near as impressed by my answer as I was by giving him that answer. At the time I just thought he was a ‘blah’ kind of individual. Looking back while thinking last week I think it may have been because he had heard a similar response a hundred or even a thousand times before.

Although that was my first time using this particular technique, it was not my last time. Luckily I’ve changed my ways. Now, whenever I have an interview I prefer to admit one of my weaknesses and just acknowledge that I am aware of it and am doing my best to overcome it. By doing this I get the response I was looking for in that interview so long ago at Publix, the expression of, ‘Wow. Haven’t heard this before.’ and actually meaning it.

So you may be asking what in the world does your little story have to do with turning a strength into a weakness and more importantly, how does any of this tie into starting your own business?! Bear with me. I’m getting to it.

Last week while at lunch I read a column at Inc.com (awesome site) that made me pick up my entrepreneurial journal and write a page of thoughts down. That article was by Norm Brodsky (here is a link to all his columns, searchable by year) and was titled “Groundhog Day”. In this article Mr. Brodsky talks about how people keep doing the wrong they’ve always done and keep getting the wrong things they’ve always got, but don’t realize why that is. Even though the individuals may not like the results that are achieved they continuously follow past patterns and harm themselves, similar to Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day.

A sentence in Mr. Brodsky’s article was the seed that grew this blog entry. In his article Mr. Brodsky said, “The most valuable business lessons we can learn come from facing up to our weaknesses.” That sentence made me think. And the line of thought it generated is not normal for me. Maybe it’s my blossoming ability to think differently (I’d like to think so); maybe it’s just a fluke? To me, it’s how Mr. Brodsky wrote the article in the first place. He took what some would consider a strength (ability to take risks) and showed it as his weakness.

Here’s what I thought: Addressing your weaknesses is not very much fun. After years of reflection I’m finally starting to be able to pinpoint all my many weaknesses. But even more important than spotting weaknesses is the ability to spot a perceived strength that is actually a weakness. How damaging would it be to have one of your traits that you think is one of the most positive aspects about you actually be one of the most negative aspects about you? If you use that trait frequently you could be causing more damage than you can fix.

To help everyone out in understanding what I’m talking about let me provide you with two personal examples.

The first strength that I have from time to time turned into a weakness is my ability to focus. First, the positive aspects of this ability. When I am assigned a task I lock onto it. I’ve been described as a hammer focusing in on a nail. A good friend of mine put it in a way that made me think of this as my first strength to weakness. He said I’m like a sledgehammer used to nail in a finishing nail. I not only lock in on my target, I obliterate everything around it. And that, my friends, is where this strength turns into a weakness. I get so focused on one thing that I don’t see anything going on around me. I don’t see other options or opportunities and where it really gets dangerous is I don’t always see people. I see my target and people are the tools to reach it. This can lead to hurt feelings and resentment from those I work with.

Here’s how this affects me starting a business: While working for others I am usually rewarded for getting my job done (object of my focus) with high level of efficiency and effectiveness, ruffled feathers are usually over looked as long as the job gets done. But if I take the same approach when running my own business I could alienate people that work for me or lose customers due to my perceived harshness. Neither one of these options is acceptable to me.

The second strength that I have from time to time turned into a weakness is my ability to switch gears quickly. In the employee environment that I come from it is usually seen as a positive trait if an employee has the ability to stop what they are doing and pick up something else completely different, and I have no problem doing that. If both projects are short lived or have a close deadline then I’ll 99 times out of 100 get them both completed in a superior manner and before the deadline. The problem arises when the tasks are long lived. Say a project has an end date of several months or years down the road. In that case I have no problem at all in switching gears and an almost impossible time going back to the original project. In an environment where I’ll be in charge of virtually all aspects of the business, including seeing to the completion of tasks that may take months or years to complete, this could be a HUGE liability.

I'm going to go ahead and tell you I don’t have a solution to this possible problem. What I do know is what I expect to get out of this introspection. My first goal is to be able to pinpoint where I see my future problems coming from (both business and personal), and I’m doing my best to think of unexpected problem areas, too. My second goal is to maximize my chances for success once I start my business. I think the only way I can accomplish either of these goals is by carefully reviewing who I am, my actions, and thinking a little differently than I’ve always thought.

We’ll find out together just how successful I am at accomplishing both goals.